a penny for thought

This entire semester I've been really interested in the idea of the power of objects in regards to history and memory. My research paper involves the use of poetry as objects in telling the stories and experiences of World War I to us. Other research projects this semester has focused on this concept of objects and memory in poetry and art in the early 20th century. Lastly for my own personal writing both poetry and short stories I've been using objects as a vehicle for the reader to walk in the shoes both present and past of the speaker or narrator.

It's no wonder that with all of these topics and themes being a major part of my life this semester that I will make connections to it even when I am taking a break from it. In one of my recent outings, I received in a pile of change a penny that dated back to 1942. It has been in existence for about seventy and quite possibly circulating from one register to another, from a purse to a wallet and from a jar on top of a refrigerator to laying heads up on a cold wet road. I looked at it and saw seventy years of stories that could span from one side of the country to the other and quite possibly around the world. I wanted to listen to it tell me the life it lived, I wanted to ask it questions like back in it's infancy did a penny really go as far as stories my grandfather told me. Or how many times did people almost pick you up and then pull back because you were tails up. I wanted to ask where it has traveled, what it has seen in the seventy years of going from one pocket to another.

In the minute of closely examining it, I thought how extravagant this must seem to an outsider, for a person to question the stories a single piece of copper could tell me. I wonder how many people would pass by this object or others with little significance without wondering where it has been, what it has seen, and who's history it been apart of and witnessed.